Department store Kohl's has completed its installation of a radio frequency identification solution to track garments in select categories at its stores, as well as distribution centers.
Geographical information systems and advanced mapping tools will increasingly be used in the supply chain to map potential risks and mitigation strategies as well as to track people and assets inside the four walls, says Wolfgang Hall, global industry manager at Esri.
The acceleration of global RFID adoption by the biggest retailers should be a lesson to those still lagging in its adoption, experts told attendees at the recent "Big Show," the National Retail Federation's 103nd Annual Convention & EXPO.
Hundreds of recreational marijuana shops are slated to open in Colorado on Jan. 1. Once that happens, every package of buds or processed products, such as marijuana-laced brownies, will have an RFID tag attached to it, intended to help the state regulate product and ensure that it comes from authorized sources.
After two years of trialing and then deploying an inventory-tracking RFID system for a large European apparel retailer, sister companies IER and SDV are now marketing a solution based on that deployment. The offering, known as iD by SDV, combines SDV's software and logistics services with IER's RFID tags and readers, enabling users to track goods from the point of manufacture to the point of sale.
While browsing through shoe displays at 32 of Bon-Ton's U.S. department stores, shoppers can use their near field communication (NFC)-enabled phones to learn more about each style, as well as whether a specific size and color is available at the store"”and, if not, how they can most efficiently acquire the shoes they are seeking.
Valio, a Finnish company that manufactures dairy consumer products, as well as powdered milk and other ingredients for the food industry, is piloting an automated solution for monitoring products as they move through packing and shipping processes, via RFID-enabled wheels on carts, also known as trolleys, that transport the goods.
Shrink, consisting of shoplifting, employee or supplier fraud, organized retail crime and administrative errors, cost the retail industry more than $112bn globally last year, according to the 2012-2013 Global Retail Theft Barometer, and represented 1.4 percent of retail sales, on average.
